That Was Then, This Is Now Essay & Criticism

That Was Then, This Is Now Critical Overview

That Was Then, This Is Now belongs to a class of books known as young adult novels. However, in 1971 when the book was published, this field was completely different. In fact, Hinton herself helped to inaugurate the new tone of the field with her immensely successful young adult novel The Outsiders (1967), which was published when Hinton was a teenager herself. As she noted in Speaking for Ourselves, the lack of books for young adults in the 1960s was disconcerting: "If you were through with the horse books and not ready for adult books there wasn't much to read except Mary Jane Goes to the Prom, and I couldn't stand to read that stuff." Hinton thought that other teenagers, like herself, might want to read about books that dealt with real issues.

This was especially true, since some teenagers had for years been reading controversial adult books like...
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